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Major ReactOS Release: Themes, Shell, ACPI, WiFi

Phoronix: Major ReactOS Release: Themes, Shell, ACPI, WiFi

ReactOS, the open-source operating system project that's been aspiring to be Microsoft Windows NT binary compatible for more than a decade, is out with a major release -- the first in nearly one year...

Interesting that this article is up already. Athough the developers of ReactOS are soon making a release, I have yet to see any official mention of 0.3.14 being out. Not even on the developers' Mailing List.

What kind of perverted person is using ReactOS for serious? 10 years and still not (nearly) good enough, meanwhile windows vista/7/8 have so many new sophisticated features that ReactOS will need another 10 years to catch up.

Nice, I've always thought the NT kernel has alot going for it, although I can't say that for some of the Windows subsystems (Win32, urk!). Given how this project attempts to reimplement the NT kernel as open source I find it very interesting. That said if ever it gained any following you know Microsoft would kill it in a hearbeat. I noticed that they have started to alleviate some of the shortcomings in their reverse engineered Windows subsystems with Wine functionality in a separate branch which apparently has a higher level of compability therefore. Makes sense to utilize the Wine implementations to make the OS more useable while their own are still being worked on.

What kind of perverted person is using ReactOS for serious? 10 years and still not (nearly) good enough, meanwhile windows vista/7/8 have so many new sophisticated features that ReactOS will need another 10 years to catch up.

In regards to program compability: With Microsoft moving towards Metro/Web programs perhaps soon Win32 and will no longer be a moving target (or at least will slow down) and the ReactOS project will have a much easier time playing catch up. Just look at Haiku, with R1 they basically recreated the last BeOS release under an open license!

How far is the project coming along in respect to compability with Windows' drivers?

What kind of perverted person is using Desktop Linux for serious? 10 years and still not (nearly) good enough, meanwhile windows vista/7/8 have so many new sophisticated features that Desktop Linux will need another 10 years to catch up.

Yeah, turns out you can say that about pretty much every desktop OS that isn't Windows.

In any event, ReactOS poses some real value: it allows a user's software (whether proprietary or not) to be Freed from an OS that may be problematic in the future. e.g., Windows XP lifetime is about up and will no longer receive security updates, yet some Windows XP software does not run on Windows Vista or later. Likewise, some of this software may be dependent on hardware that has XP drivers but not Linux drivers.

There's value in all software being Free. Maybe not always on the date of release, or not even until a decade or more has passed, but at some point that old software is no longer supported, maintained, or sold by its original publisher, and Free versions allow continued maintenance and study long past those "artificial" deadlines.

Yeah, turns out you can say that about pretty much every desktop OS that isn't Windows.

In any event, ReactOS poses some real value: it allows a user's software (whether proprietary or not) to be Freed from an OS that may be problematic in the future. e.g., Windows XP lifetime is about up and will no longer receive security updates, yet some Windows XP software does not run on Windows Vista or later. Likewise, some of this software may be dependent on hardware that has XP drivers but not Linux drivers.

There's value in all software being Free. Maybe not always on the date of release, or not even until a decade or more has passed, but at some point that old software is no longer supported, maintained, or sold by its original publisher, and Free versions allow continued maintenance and study long past those "artificial" deadlines.

Once reactos gets quite mature and stable it would be quite useful for even running legacy mission-critical server applications too.

In regards to program compability: With Microsoft moving towards Metro/Web programs perhaps soon Win32 and will no longer be a moving target (or at least will slow down) and the ReactOS project will have a much easier time playing catch up. Just look at Haiku, with R1 they basically recreated the last BeOS release under an open license!

How far is the project coming along in respect to compability with Windows' drivers?

I can't tell in general, but in my case (with a K8M800) there was only one driver I couldn't install (I unpacked it manually, but currently there is a regression in trunk which doesn't allow me to complete the boot sequence anymore; I'll test a little more this weekend), the IGP's one. Network, audio and something else I already forgot worked nicely. USB, though, is not supported in trunk yet, and VIA's and intel's implementation is not supported in the branch either yet.

Watcom?

I think I remember finding something sometime about trying to make ReactOS self-hosting using the openWatcom compiler. Apparently they have focused on the MSVC instead (which could be problematic since it is closed source).

I think I remember finding something sometime about trying to make ReactOS self-hosting using the openWatcom compiler. Apparently they have focused on the MSVC instead (which could be problematic since it is closed source).

Anyone heard anything else about Watcom and ReactOS?

Can't recall that I have, either way it builds with both GCC and MSVC (previously it only built with GCC).